Welcome back to Of Counsel, my monthly advice & asks column. If you ever find yourself wondering, “What would Cece do/think?” then you’ve come to the right place! You can find previous columns here and submit questions here. And if you appreciate the work that goes into this newsletter and want to help ensure that my educational and informational content remains free for all, you know what to do! ICYMI: I finished the first draft of my book’s manuscript!

Hello! This is Everything Is Amazing, a newsletter about science, curiosity, wonder, and the importance of trying lots of different stuff for no damn reason. Today, a coda to last season’s exploration of the nearly three-quarters of the surface of our planet we tend to overlook, with its 65,000km-long mountain range and its underwater ‘lost cities’ and ancient flooded landscapes and all sorts of stuff… You can read the whole thing here, if you like.

Good afternoon my darlings. It’s raining today, I didn’t sleep and Taylor Swift just announced her new album the Tortured Poets Department so I am channeling this gentle theatrical energy: Revisiting Muzzy last week reminded me of the iconic: BIG CHALLENGES! He was never used for anything. As someone who only really knows the hits of Sanrio (Keroppi please return my calls), I wondered - are there other devastating cuties I have yet to be introduced to?

The scouting combine is our annual baptism into the NFL’s bulls**t. We emerge from it soggy and squealing but reenergized, born again to both the awe and wonder of professional football and the grimy drudgery of the stagecraft behind the magic. The privilege to speak with any authority about the NFL offseason is earned by nodding through dozens of hypnotically uninformative press conferences, watching young men perform drills that only seasoned coaches can evaluate, scouring workout results down to the hundredth of a decimal and wobbling about in the wee hours hoping that a powerful agent thinks enough of you to share a secret that’s actually a self-serving lie.

As we continue in our season 2 exploration of BoJack Horseman, in episode 3, “Still Broken,” we find ourselves at the funeral for BoJack’s former friend, Herb Kazazz, who I wrote about extensively in this post. While Princess Carolyn tries to convince Henry Winkler that she is attending the funeral because of her close relationship with Herb (a lie) rather than to schmooze other celebrities (the truth), BoJack and the rest of the cast of Horsin’ Around go on an adventure, searching for “Herb’s gold.